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They do seem to supply the inherently contradictory element seen at the heart of a lot of viral ideologies. Bitcoin ideology propagated through two things: *

They do seem to supply the inherently contradictory element seen at the heart of a lot of viral ideologies. Bitcoin ideology propagated through two things: * if you want to get rich for free, take on this weird ideology that goes with it. * don't worry if you don't understand the ideology yet, just keep doing the things and you'll get rich for free! Since the ideology doesn't actually make coherent sense - and is literally straight out of John Birch Society and Eustace Mullins - this means the second condition is reinforced. (Not making coherent sense is why you will observe advocates claiming that everything and its opposite is actually good for Bitcoin.) So being made of fractally wrong ideas that don't work did indeed help it along a whole lot during the bubble! That and the insatiable urge to gamble of Chinese day traders. And the drug market. It was less convincing when it turned out it wasn't going to go up forever, but was a completely standard asset bubble.

petertodd 10y ago
> Bitcoin ideology Yes, a subset of the Bitcoin community is a mixture of crazy and money driven; that happens a lot in all sorts of communities. But you've completely missed the reason I and most other developers I know work on Bitcoin: it's censorship resistant money. For me personally, I first got interested in digital currency years ago when I started getting interested in the decentralized censorship-resistance publishing network Freenet; adding censorship-resistant money to censorship-resistant publishing was an obvious extension. Is that always pretty? No. But neither is freedom of speech protecting technology - witness how Tor is used for lots of unsavory things too.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  >a subset of the Bitcoin community is a mixture of crazy and money driven The lunatic economic theories were literally a part of Bitcoin from day one. David Golumbia's book is highly recommended here (I cribbed from it heavily), even if he is a huge commie. I must admit the censorship-resistant money aspect is a positive for me too. Wikileaks having its funding cut off at the whim of three companies threw that into stark relief. I'll also note that the actual Bitcoin devs are generally way saner than the ideologues ...

petertodd 10y ago

> Bitcoin ideology Yes, a subset of the Bitcoin community is a mixture of crazy and money driven; that happens a lot in all sorts of communities. But you've completely missed the reason I and most other developers I know work on Bitcoin: it's censorship resistant money. For me personally, I first got interested in digital currency years ago when I started getting interested in the decentralized censorship-resistance publishing network Freenet; adding censorship-resistant money to censorship-resistant publishing was an obvious extension. Is that always pretty? No. But neither is freedom of speech protecting technology - witness how Tor is used for lots of unsavory things too.

davidgerard 10y ago
>a subset of the Bitcoin community is a mixture of crazy and money driven The lunatic economic theories were literally a part of Bitcoin from day one. David Golumbia's book is highly recommended here (I cribbed from it heavily), even if he is a huge commie. I must admit the censorship-resistant money aspect is a positive for me too. Wikileaks having its funding cut off at the whim of three companies threw that into stark relief. I'll also note that the actual Bitcoin devs are generally way saner than the ideologues ...